Motherhood is the best part of every woman’s life, a woman feels complete when she becomes a mother. While most babies are born to women in their 20s and 30s, the continued rise of older moms reflects a long-term shift to delayed childbearing.
Births among women ages 40-44 have been rising since the early 1980s and kept rising in 2017, even as the overall U.S. birth rate fell to a record low, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest report. Births in women older than 45 held steady.
Women ages 40 to 44 had 114,730 of the 3.8 million babies born in 2017, women 45 and older had 9,325.
A woman’s natural ability to become pregnant begins a steep decline around age 37, reaching odds of less than 10% a month by age 40, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Well, there is no age to become a mother, we share some of the famous women became mothers in their 40s. Here is the list.
1. Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon gave birth to her first child, daughter Eva Amurri, at 39 and then went on to welcome sons Jack Henry at age 42 and Miles Guthrie at age 45. Davis’ Thelma & Louise co-star welcomed sons Jack and Miles with her then-partner, Tim Robbinsm at 42 and 45, respectively. She was already mom to daughter Eva Amurri from a previous relationship.
“It was just such a freak [thing] that I got pregnant that I thought, ‘I can’t ignore this.’ And so I jumped,” she toldTime Out New Yorkin 2014. “I had to pay attention when it happened, because nobody could understand how it had happened.”
2. Jennifer Lopez
With a successful career as an singer, actress and American Idol judge, life always seems to be going smoothly for Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer had to use in vitro fertilization. With this method, the egg is extracted from the body, gets fertilized in a lab, and then it is returned to the womb when it’s clear that the embryo is developing correctly. She became a mother to twins Emme and Max at age 38 by her then-husband Marc Anthony.
3. Kelly Preston
John Travolta’s wife gave birth at 48 to son Benjamin in 2010 after the couple’s 16-year-old son Jett died the year before following a seizure. In a 2011 interview, the actress told Health magazine that it was “amazing” to have a child at that stage in her life.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I was floored,” she said. “I’d snuck out of bed and then came back and woke Johnny up in bed. We both started crying. It was wonderful.”
4. Celine Dion
The GRAMMY winner gave birth to twin boys, Eddy and Nelson, at 42 years old in 2010 after multiple failed IVF attempts that she told Hello! were “difficult emotionally.” The singer’s husband and father of her children, Rene Angelil, died on January 14, 2016, after a long battle with cancer.
5. Halle Berry
Forty-one was the magic number for the Extant star, that’s the age that she had her first child, Nahla, with then-beau, Gabriel Aubry, in 2008. Berry was 47 when she had her second child, Maceo, with estranged husband Olivier Martinez. In 2014, she got candid with Ellen DeGeneres about breastfeeding.
6. Kim Basinger
The Oscar winning actress had a daughter, Ireland, with then-husband, Alec Baldwin, when she was 41. Due to the couple’s divorce in 2002, Basinger took a non-traditional approach to raising her daughter, according to an interview she had with The EDIT.
7. Gwen Stefani
The Voice coach was 44 when she welcomed Apollo Bowie Flynn in 2014. She already had a growing brood of boys, including older sons Kingston and Zuma, with het then-husband, Gavin Rossdale.
Stefani referred to Apollo’s birth as a surprise “miracle” in 2015 interview with InStyle. She revealed that the experience put her in “a whole new spiritual place.”
8. Salma Hayek
The Oscar-nominated actress and husband, Francois-Henri Pinault, became parents to daughter, Valentina, when Hayek was 40, which, according to her, was for the better.
“I’m a more fulfilled human being now, and I probably wouldn’t have been 10 years ago,” Hayek told WebMD magazine. “She gets a better mother for being born now.”
9. Madonna
The pop star had her first child, Lourdes, when she was 36. When she was 41, she had a son, Rocco. In addition, she raises 4 adopted children from Africa.
“Before I had kids, I used to be very selfish, but being a mother changed my attitude completely,” says Madonna.
10. Mariah Carey
The GRAMMY winner gave birth to twins Moroccan and Monroe at 42 in 2011. Unlike Kidman, Carey plans on Roe and Roc being her only kids.
“Those are my two babies,” she explained to The Lowdown’s Diana Madison earlier this year. “I think they would be so jealous because they get upset when I pet the dog.”